The NCAA today released the latest Graduation Success Rate data, which measures how many student-athletes in the classes of 2004 through 2007 graduated within six years of their enrollment.
USC student-athletes who entered Troy in those years had an overall GSR of 80%, up 3 percentage points from last year. Of USC's 21 sports, a third had a team GSR above 90%, including 100% for women's golf and women's volleyball.
The Trojan football team's GSR of 58% was up 5 percentage points from the previous year. That number is projected to rise into the 70% range in the next few years' GSR announcements.
Of the 65 football players in the current 2004-07 cohort, 33 played in the NFL and 17 of those NFLers (including Mark Sanchez, Malcolm Smith, Jordan Cameron and Jeff Byers) got their USC degrees within the six-year GSR calculation period. The other 16 NFL Trojans from that cohort left school after their final fall season in order to prepare for the NFL and didn't finish their graduation requirements in that six-year window. But four of those 16 have since returned to campus and graduated while another will graduate this fall, bringing to 66% of the cohort's football players to get a USC degree. And five others likely will re-enroll at USC in the spring to complete their degree work, which means that 74% of the 2004-07 cohort will be USC graduates.
The USC men's basketball team's GSR rose 12 percentage points from last year to 67%, just shy of the national average of 71%. The Trojans turned out a number of NBA players during that 2004-07 era, including Nick Young, Taj Gibson, O.J. Mayo and Gabe Pruitt. Every USC men's basketballer in that cohort who didn't play in the NBA has graduated.
"The 2004-07 period was a golden era for football and men's basketball at USC, with many future professionals on those rosters," said Dr. Magdi El Shahawy, USC senior associate athletic director in charge of Student-Athlete Academic Services. "Our GSR in those sports is somewhat a victim of our athletic success during that time frame.
"To get a true snapshot of our academic performance then, one needs to look at our sports programs across the board. Our overall 80% figure is very close to the national rate, which is at 82%. And if you take football and men's basketball out of the equation, our GSR would be 87%, which would place us among the Pac-12's top four schools if every school's GSR was calculated without those two sports."
